Aren’t you making it up? – Why women don’t report harassment

There has been a lot of discussion about why women don’t report sexual harassment (Ophelia Benson, Greta Christina) and what they’re up against when they do, including hyper-skepticism over claims that are routine, mundane, and unsurprising.

I would like to present to you a comment I got today, which you can go find if you want, but I have no intention of linking to it or encouraging people to respond to it. I want you to read it and keep in mind a few things:

Unlike most cases of sexual harassment, I had several witnesses

Many witnesses were willing to make public statements

Although the report was incomplete, it was made as the harassment was ongoing, not afterwards

It was not a complaint about a named person, no one is on the defensive

It was not a complaint about a well-known speaker

Many people in the community know and respect me, I am not unknown

I have a public platform from which to speak

These things are not always true for a woman who is being or has been harassed and the following is a response I got with all of those things on my side. Take away one or two or all of these and tell me what kind of response the average woman might expect to get. And then tell me whether you’d find it worth it to make a report when you can expect this treatment from many other people.

Miss Miller, is there any actual evidence that the alleged harassment took place? Is there any actual evidence that “some other women” were harassed? Did you submit a written report of the alleged harassment to the conference organizers? Did the alleged “other women” submit written reports? Did any of you report the alleged harassment directly to “DJ”?

If the guy was so obnoxious for so long, why didn’t you ask someone for help? Why didn’t you ask for help right away if you were so repulsed by and uncomfortable with the guy’s alleged behavior? You say that someone from TAM’s staff eventually (but “so quickly”) intervened but you don’t say whether you asked for help or if someone just happened to come along and deal with the alleged situation.

You say that someone from TAM “made it stop” and that someone kicked the guy out but you don’t say exactly who it was who first intervened and how they knew you were being harassed. You say that you were told that “DJ himself” kicked the guy out but you don’t say who told you that.

You obviously think that TAM should consider what you did as a “report of harassment” but you don’t actually say what you did, exactly who intervened, whether you asked for help, who you talked to (either to ask for help or otherwise), and there are a lot of other missing, important details.

Another thing you said is that you were ultimately impressed with and proud of TAM’s staff for so quickly intervening. If they intervened so quickly, how could the guy have harassed you from room to room for so long?

You also make it sound as though “DJ” must have known about the alleged situation at the time but you don’t actually know that he did because you didn’t actually talk to him about it at the time, did you?

Exactly how would it make TAM “look bad” if you had gone “into explicit detail of exactly how gross the guy had been to” you? Who exactly would you have gone into explicit detail to about how gross the guy was to you that would have made TAM look bad? If you had gone into explicit detail with TAM’s staff, how would that make TAM look bad? If you didn’t go into explicit detail with someone on TAM’s staff at the time, then why did they intervene and kick the guy out? How would they know for sure what they were intervening with?

And another question: Do you expect the TAM staff or “DJ” to be psychic and to know what’s happening to you and/or other people at the conferences at all times, and to know what has allegedly happened to you or other people even though you and/or those other people don’t properly report it to the people in charge?

According to your own words TAM’s staff took care of the alleged situation “so quickly” and effectively. That speaks well of TAM’s staff, which should demonstrate to you and all others that TAM’s staff deals with problems quickly and effectively as soon as they know about them. TAM’s staff can’t reasonably be expected to be psychic or to personally babysit every woman (or man) at their conferences. It’s unreasonable for you to blame TAM or “DJ” for something that you could have ended a lot faster if you had asked for help quickly and had properly reported it to the people in charge.

Is it wrong for ‘skeptics’ to be skeptical of non-evidential claims that don’t add up, and that weren’t properly reported to the people in charge of the conference?

Are you making up the whole thing?

On its own, it might just seem like a bad apple not worthy of notice, but I’ve gotten dozens of other comments here, on other blogs, on Facebook, and in e-mails that reflect the same sentiment. And I knew I would get them. Every woman knows she will get them. Every time she speaks up. Every time. And sometimes it’s just exhausting. It hurts a little, having to relive it and be called names and a liar, but ultimately it just makes you tired, completely bone-weary, and a little heartbroken.

This is fucking heartbreaking. I knew about the phenomenon, as it is remarkably similar to the reason why hate crimes are systematically underreported by people who are disproportionately the targets thereof. Still… reading the contempt dripping off the words is pretty stark.

I think there are a lot of people who operate under the hope/delusion that the backlash you get is because people hate Rebecca Watson and not because people are sexist jerks whether your name is Rebecca Watson or not.

The crime of it is that this treatment women are getting should not be “just the way it is.” I have not had much time to really jump into this fray because I’ve been fighting misogyny in the trenches in the War on Women. It was not easy crunching down my 131 page medical ethics/legal ethics article into a 24-page Fact Sheet arguing for women’s human rights to bodily autonomy and bodily integrity, citing medical ethics violations out the wazoo being committed in the name of “freedom of religion”, and the whole rest of that rotten can of worms. But now that I can take a tiny breather, I thought I would see what’s been going on with my fellow atheists and skeptics, and I see this ugly brouhaha is STILL going on, and, to me, it looks like the whole MRA/PUA rapists’ rights bowel movement blew up and splattered, deluging everyone with shit. I wonder what Madalyn Murray O’Hair would say?

I read this about 2 hours after I had to drop a class because not one, but TWO men who have stalked, threatened and stole from me work in the building my classroom’s located in. I tried to ask to be allowed to park in a back lot and come in a back door… one staff member said that I could- then I called back to day to confirm it and they told me they “couldn’t help me”. So, my stalkers get to work and live free of fear, and I have to sacrifice my academic advancement because I am afraid of having any contact with them.

In addition to all the already-mentioned reasons that this comment is infuriating, they even misrepresent why you raised the point in the first place.

“It’s unreasonable for you to blame TAM or “DJ” ” … when it’s not what you were doing at all. You were blaming DJ for asserting that these events never happened, not for the way he or TAM handled things in the moment.

On the one hand, these kinds of comments are horrible for exactly the reasons you state and then some, but on the other hand, we’ve also seen how large the number of positive, supportive people can be, and I hope you take at least some comfort from that part of the response to balance the pain of some of the others.

The proposed SOPA bill would allow copyright holders and the Department of Justice to file a court order against websites that enable or facilitate copyright infringement. Now, that’s a broad statement. Basically, “the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites.” This could potentially shut down sites like Tumblr, Flickr, and more. We certainly don’t want people pirating, but this bill will seriously cripple the internet and our First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Welcome!

This blog focuses on whatever I am feeling passionate about at the moment. Usually this is something to do with atheism, feminism, mass media, and/or the ukulele. I write, give occasional speeches, and am currently getting my PhD in Mass Communications from South Carolina. Before going back to school, I worked in Los Angeles in reality tv, web series, and film. Welp, gotta go.